Here and Now
by EmpressHikari
Summary: Four months after Anyone But You.The tamers bump into someone who Ryo never thought he'd see again and who will slowly unravel the secret of his past but how will this effect the tamers and more importantly, Rika...
1. Chapter One

Ok, Jeri's party was in the summer right before school started. Now it's winter break. So lets see. Lets say that, like my school, theirs starts in the middle of August. Ok so now it's the middle of December. Thats...four months. Rika and Ryo have been dating for about three. Just to let you know, Ryo and Kazu-15, Rika, Henry, Alice, and Takato-14, Kenta-13, Suzy, Ai, and Mako-11. Why did some of the ages change? Because of birthdays. But whatever. On to the story.  
  
Disclaimer: I do not own Digimon, but I will one day and then it will come back on air and be better than ever. Hey I can dream can't I?  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
Here and Now  
  
By Empress Hikari  
  
Chapter One  
  
Rika shivered as the cold winter air blew past her. Clutching her jacket to closer to her body, she glanced up at the crossing light at the corner, waiting for it to tell her it was safe to cross.   
  
Winter break was almost over; only three days were left. She wasn't exactly thrilled to be returning to school so soon; however, it was still Friday, and that always made things better.  
  
  
  
Every Friday afternoon and Saturday since the tamers learned how to safely travel to the Digital World, they had gotten together at Guilmon's hide out and visited their digimon. They didn't use the tunnel in the park anymore like they originally planned to. Instead, Yamaki had designed a new machine that would transport everyone there, much to the relief of Jeri and Suzie who, though loved their visits with their partners, hated ruining their clothes with all the mud.  
  
Today, however, had another surprise to it. Yamaki had called everyone to a meeting at the Hypnos building that morning. They were all supposed to get their at nine, so in a half hour from the current time. He didn't exactly give them much of a warning about it either. For example, Rika got the call at seven that morning and she was only the third to find out, the first two being Henry and Alice.  
  
Currently, Rika only had a block to go till she reached her destination, and though it was obvious to everyone that the meeting was important, but that didn't prevent our favorite red head from being a grumpy, sleepy mess. She probably would have been in a lot better of a mood, if it wasn't for the fact that at eleven her mother was forcing her to go to a photo shoot. Spring line, and you know what that means. Yup. Easter Sunday dresses. Rika shuddered at the thought.  
  
So caught up was Rika in her own little world, that she did not realize someone was approaching until her vision was blocked by two hands.  
  
"Guess who!" A voice said playfully.  
  
Quickly she pulled away and turned around, not that she needed to. Only one person acted like that around her. Even if she didn't know that she would recognize his voice anywhere.   
  
"Knock it off, Akiyama." She replied, pretending to be annoyed but the effect was rather lost due to the grin on her face.  
  
Ryo just smiled at her and slid his arm around her waist. The two of them had been going out since about a few weeks after Jeri's party. Despite this, Rika hadn't changed much, but Ryo didn't mind. After all Rika was who she was and that's what he loved about her.  
  
Rika rolled her eyes, the grin still on her face, but did nothing about his actions, and then the two walked across the street, the light having changed  
  
Ok, so some things had changed.  
  
"So how's life, Ri?"  
  
"Not bad. My mom is making me do another photo shoot. Other than that though."  
  
"Photo shoot, eh? Can I watch?" Ryo asked jokingly, causing her to roll her eyes at him.  
  
"Well, we're here." The red head stated, kind of surprised that time flew so fast.  
  
Ryo removed his arm and opened the door. Taking a slow and overly dramatic bow, he looked up and grinned. "Milady?"  
  
"Come on, Ryo. We're gonna be late." She laughed and walked in.  
  
After walking past the receptionist and up the stairs, the two were greeted by a rather unwanted event.  
  
"YOUR HERE!!!!!!!!!!!" Jeri screeched, jumping onto both of them in a hug, causing the two of them to tumble down a flight of stairs and herself to fall on the floor at the top of the stairs.  
  
"OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD! I AM SOOOO SORRY!" Jeri apologized, nearly in tears, as her, Takato, Kazu, and Henry all came running down to them. The group suddenly froze on the last few stairs as Rika sat up, rubbing her head.  
  
Kazu fought grinning and lost, Jeri looked upset from the fall and tying Takato's reaction in surprise, while Henry just smirked at the red head.  
  
"What? I'm ok." Rika said, slightly annoyed.  
  
"Comfortable, Ri?" Henry asked, the smirk growing.  
  
"Huh?" She looked down and saw she was sitting on a now very embarrassed Ryo.  
  
"Umm... hey." The blue-eyed boy mumbled.   
  
Blushing the color of her hair, Rika quickly got off of him and stood. Ryo stood as well.   
  
Takato rolled his eyes at the two boys teasing the couple. "Come on, let's get going before Yamaki has a stroke."  
  
"I heard that, Takato."  
  
The group froze. Yamaki smiled inwardly.  
  
"Are you ready for the meeting now or not?"  
  
The group murmured apologies and quickly ran up the stairs and into the meeting room.  
  
Yamaki waited for the small group to settle down and picked up a small remote.  
  
The lights dimmed and the tamers quieted down. A glowing moniter showing a map lowered down into view.  
  
"Now there has been serious disturbances over the past few weeks in this area." Yamaki started, indicating the section of the map outlined with a blinking red border. "Now as you can tell with the graphs show on this screen..." He pointed to another monitor. "The energy fluctuations are significant enough to...."  
  
"No offence Yamaki but I think you may have lost Kazu with those four syllable words."  
  
"Shut up, Rika!"  
  
"Ms. Nonaka, I do not think it is necessary to interrupt this presentation anymore than you already have." Yamaki said coldly.  
  
"Actually Yamaki we would like it if you cut to the point rather than giving us a long winded explanation." Alice cut in before Rika could snap off.  
  
"Alright then. There is an unusual amount of digivolving going on in this area and we want you to find out why."  
  
"Well that's all you needed to say," Alice said with a smirk and started to walk off.  
  
Going over to the portal to the digital world, she punched in the code. Waiting until the final person had left, she got in and was consumed by the blue glow of light. When the light vanished she was gone.  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
Sorry it took so long. Its over two weeks late and with no good excuse other than I haven't had the time.  
  
I've had a lot of schedule changes in my classes so my workload is just screwed up. Also I'm participating in a lot more clubs this semester than last semester. Over all the main thing is I just haven't been on the computer a lot recently. In fact I think my max time for this week is twenty minutes.  
  
I'm not trying to make excuses.   
  
I'm sorry it's taken so long..  
  
Anyways things will make more sense as they go along. The next two chapters should explain everything.  
  
Also, big thanks goes to Logo_The_Twin for both her great Leelice(Alice x Jenrya/Henry) fic, Golden Dragon, as well as her tremendous amount of patience.  
  
Oh yeah, also, I should have the first chapter of MY Leelice, Shadow Puppets, out by the time the third chapter of this is out.  
  
On other notes I have another story coming out at the same time as the third-fifth chapter of this story comes out. I've been working on it for longer than my finished fic, Anyone But You, has been an idea in my head.  
  
Well thanks for reading this. 


	2. Chapter Two

Well I hope you liked the last chapter. Here's number two.   
  
Oh yeah. Sorry I haven't posted in a while.  
  
You see, I goofed off first semester causing a drop in a few of my grades. I had to bring them up this semester or repeat that semester of the class. Fun, no?  
  
Well I may end up taking summer school for one class still, but over all, I will be fine.  
  
I have to admit that I have lost quite a bit of interest for this story, but I will finish it nonetheless.  
  
With Summer coming up, the chapters will pop up more rapidly.  
  
Yay!  
  
Also, thank you to everyone who has shown me patience and support.  
  
Disclaimer: I do not own Digimon, but I will one day and then it will come back on air and be better than ever. Hey I can dream can't I?  
  
Here and Now  
  
By Empress Hikari  
  
Chapter Two  
  
"Couldn't Yamaki have transported us any closer?" Kazu complained, the group having walked for about two and a half hours.  
  
"Don't blame Yamaki. The equipment isn't installed everywhere." Alice replied, just as tired and hot as he was, under the burning grassland sun.  
  
"Yeah, but I know that they had to have installed it in a closer area." Kenta said quietly.  
  
"Well why do we have to use the stupid stuff anyways?" Kazu replied hotly, while glaring at Kenta for his betrayal.  
  
"Shut up, morons." Rika shot back from the front of their group, too tired to add any ice to her voice, both her patience for stupidity and energy to scream having dried up and withered away in the heat.  
  
Kazu ignored her and continued. "Maybe Miss Goth over there got the coordinates wrong."  
  
"I didn't get them wrong." Alice said icily.  
  
Henry sensed his girlfriend was about to give Kazu a one way ticket to the moon, and decided to intervene. "Kazu, knock it off. We're all hot and"  
  
"Shade!"  
  
Everyone turned quickly from what they were doing to see Takato and Kenta booking it across the prairie to a forest on the horizon, whooping and yelling out their glee.  
  
Kazu got a huge smile on his face as took off right behind them, shouting back playful insults.  
  
"Morons." Rika muttered, shrugging off the arm Ryo tried to sympathetically put around her shoulders, "They better hope they get to that shade soon or their tiny brains will fry."  
  
Henry sighed, wiping the sweat from his eyes, "Calm down, Ri."  
  
"In the mean time we may want to get up there before OUR brains fry. After all ours are the only ones who function, so if that happens we'll all die." Suzy told them with a surprisingly irritated tone to her voice as she quickened her pace.  
  
At the Forrest  
  
Ryo sighed happily as he flopped on the cool grass. Hopefully, now that the group had a chance to cool off, Rika would cheer up a bit.  
  
The redhead walked over to tree and leaned against it, not even removing her shades. The sour look still plagued her features.  
  
"Hey, Ri," Alice's voice cut in, turning both Ryo and Rika's heads, "Loosen up. According to the map, we're pretty close to the area where the disturbances have been taking place."  
  
Rika looked away from her best friend. Ryo smiled and suppressed a laugh, he knew Rika was rolling her eyes behind those shades and Alice knew it too.  
  
Smirking, Alice stepped closer to the couple, "Well if nothing else, there's water around here. There has to be since there are plants."  
  
"Water!?!" Takato shouted as he jumped up, cutting Jeri off from what she had been telling him, "Where?!?"  
  
"I said there would PROBABLY be some SOMEWHERE NEARBY," Alice said curtly.  
  
"Yeesh," Henry said, walking up behind Alice and wrapping his arms around her, "Take it easy, Alice. The guy's dehydrated. We all are."  
  
"True," She agreed, leaning slightly back so she was closer to him.  
  
"Aww," Ryo smiled, having gotten up already. Putting his arm around Rika again, who in turn rolled her eyes and walked off towards the others.  
  
"Looks like someone here is PMSing...," Kazu muttered, causing both a gasp and a slap from the nearby Jeri. "OWW!" Kazu exclaimed, rubbing his cheek, "What was that for?!?"   
  
She just glared.  
  
Kazu turned and began muttering again, "Jeez...you're even beginning to act like Rika."  
  
"Actually, no. Jeri's a lot nicer than I am, Kazu"  
  
The brunette jumped, and looked up to see a smirking Rika standing above him, the very picture of ass-kicking feminism.  
  
Alice chuckled, and Rika smiled a bit more, let out a small laugh, and walked over towards the blond.  
  
"Well, is everyone all rested up so we can enter the area, get this done, and go home?" Ryo, having sat back down on the cool grass.  
  
Takato sighed, "Yeah, I guess we're ready."  
  
There was a chorus of muttering unenthusiastic yeses.  
  
"I guess we should go then."  
  
"Yeah..."  
  
So picking up their stuff, the group trudged off further into the woods.  
  
Rika looked up at Ryo oddly.  
  
Taking an over exaggerated bow, the boy smiled goofily at her, "After you, Milady."  
  
She smiled and began walking. He smiled as well, and both their smiles grwe slightly larger as he slipped his hand in hers.  
  
Well, did you like it? I hopefully didn't mess up too badly. I wrote the first half of that directly after having written the first, and a little before posting the first.  
  
I only write this just now, which is goodness only knows how much later.  
  
Well I'll get the next chapter up as soon as I can. Exams are in 11 days but then it's summer so yay.  
  
Laters.  
  
Empress Hikari 


End file.
